I moved to the Netherlands in 1991, and in the spring of 1992 my parents asked me to come home for a visit because my grandmother was dying. Which sucked.
Anyway I think I’m going to be the cool kid and smuggle some of this sweet Dutch weed back to the States. But how? Checked luggage, no control. Something on my person but not obvious? Yeah, that’s the ticket, so I stuffed my longest glove finger full of dank weed and put in my overcoat pocket thinking I could drop it without notice if things looked bad.
I land at Hartsfield and go to get my checked luggage, my weed infested glove in my overcoat pocket thrown over the back of the luggage trolly. There is this cute girl in a uniform with a beagle on a leash. The dogs starts walking toward the luggage trolly, and I’m getting nervous. He has a big old sniff and the cute girl gives him a treat. She walks up to me and says, “Sir, do you have any …fruit?”
I’m trying very hard to play it cool, but I’m sure I was not. My then girlfriend now wife had put a banana in the other overcoat pocket so I’d “eat healthy.” I answered yes, I have a banana and she says, “Then you’ll have to go to Agricultural Customs.”
Which at that time was in the basement of Hartsfield. There is only one counter with two official dudes behind it and my hand to god, two dudes with a fucking goat. These four have a very long back and forth until one of the dudes makes a call, and this other dude comes down and starts speaking French to the Two Men and a Goat. All’s well, the dudes and their goat are free to go.
[The entire time about 50m away there were constant patrols with the actual drug dogs, the german Shepards walking past me while I’m thinking fuck they are going to catch me, put me in a hole and sodomize me.]
I walk up to the two dudes at the counter and they ask me what I have. I pull out the banana which is pretty banged up at this point. They asked if I wanted to eat it, and I said no, so they directed me to a trash can behind them told me to throw it away and be on my way.
The great irony is when I finally got home to SC my mom had scored what turned out to the best weed any of us had ever smoked, and my nearly-failed career as a drug mule was all for naught.
The second one happened recently. I was going to my company’s office party at their HQ in Cyprus, flying out of Schiphol (Amsterdam). My bag goes through the scanner, gets sent down the “we gonna open this son” track. The dude points at my suitcase and asks what is on this side of it. I open it and show him one full half of the suitcase is filled with this https://www.oetker.nl/recepten/r/gevulde-speculaas which are rectangular stuffed pastry things we eat around the feast of St Nicolas (eve).
He pointed at them and looked at me somberly and said, “This is bad, very bad.” I said, Ummm, they are just treats for my coworkers." He looked at me, back down, and said “This is forbidden, you are in trouble.” Then he said nothing and I said nothing and then he busted into laughter.
He said, “I’m just fucking with you man. Under the scanner those look exactly like C-4.”
So for any Dutch traveling around xmas, many don’t bring those with you.
Wow ok I have two. The first is long.
I moved to the Netherlands in 1991, and in the spring of 1992 my parents asked me to come home for a visit because my grandmother was dying. Which sucked.
Anyway I think I’m going to be the cool kid and smuggle some of this sweet Dutch weed back to the States. But how? Checked luggage, no control. Something on my person but not obvious? Yeah, that’s the ticket, so I stuffed my longest glove finger full of dank weed and put in my overcoat pocket thinking I could drop it without notice if things looked bad.
I land at Hartsfield and go to get my checked luggage, my weed infested glove in my overcoat pocket thrown over the back of the luggage trolly. There is this cute girl in a uniform with a beagle on a leash. The dogs starts walking toward the luggage trolly, and I’m getting nervous. He has a big old sniff and the cute girl gives him a treat. She walks up to me and says, “Sir, do you have any …fruit?”
I’m trying very hard to play it cool, but I’m sure I was not. My then girlfriend now wife had put a banana in the other overcoat pocket so I’d “eat healthy.” I answered yes, I have a banana and she says, “Then you’ll have to go to Agricultural Customs.”
Which at that time was in the basement of Hartsfield. There is only one counter with two official dudes behind it and my hand to god, two dudes with a fucking goat. These four have a very long back and forth until one of the dudes makes a call, and this other dude comes down and starts speaking French to the Two Men and a Goat. All’s well, the dudes and their goat are free to go.
[The entire time about 50m away there were constant patrols with the actual drug dogs, the german Shepards walking past me while I’m thinking fuck they are going to catch me, put me in a hole and sodomize me.]
I walk up to the two dudes at the counter and they ask me what I have. I pull out the banana which is pretty banged up at this point. They asked if I wanted to eat it, and I said no, so they directed me to a trash can behind them told me to throw it away and be on my way.
The great irony is when I finally got home to SC my mom had scored what turned out to the best weed any of us had ever smoked, and my nearly-failed career as a drug mule was all for naught.
The second one happened recently. I was going to my company’s office party at their HQ in Cyprus, flying out of Schiphol (Amsterdam). My bag goes through the scanner, gets sent down the “we gonna open this son” track. The dude points at my suitcase and asks what is on this side of it. I open it and show him one full half of the suitcase is filled with this https://www.oetker.nl/recepten/r/gevulde-speculaas which are rectangular stuffed pastry things we eat around the feast of St Nicolas (eve).
He pointed at them and looked at me somberly and said, “This is bad, very bad.” I said, Ummm, they are just treats for my coworkers." He looked at me, back down, and said “This is forbidden, you are in trouble.” Then he said nothing and I said nothing and then he busted into laughter.
He said, “I’m just fucking with you man. Under the scanner those look exactly like C-4.”
So for any Dutch traveling around xmas, many don’t bring those with you.
That was a great read friend! It made me laugh at least twice.